


Forever Towards the Dawn

by DasWarSchonKaputt



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, First C-Rank Curse, Fuuinjutsu, Growing Up, Past Lives, Prophecy, Reincarnation, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-12 16:39:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4486938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasWarSchonKaputt/pseuds/DasWarSchonKaputt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uzumaki Naruto dreamt of war, chased by memories of past lives he couldn’t quite claim as his own. Uchiha Sasuke dreamt of slaughter and bloodshed, all of it captured in perfect, unforgettable clarity.</p><p>Time shifts, souls move on, but chakra – chakra remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Memorandum

**Author's Note:**

> The basic idea behind this is that Naruto and Sasuke remember(-ish) their past lives as Asura and Indra's reincarnations. There are conditions on the memories, though -- Naruto can only remember moments when his incarnations were using larger than normal amounts of chakra and Sasuke can only remember moments when his incarnations had their sharingan active.
> 
> Sasuke is probably a bit more with the program than Naruto is, but we'll get into that later.
> 
> (And I may or may not have a plan for Sakura, but she won't debut until chapter 4/5.)

**[1]  
In Memorandum **

You never forgot your first kill.

There was the nameless, faceless assassin that thought it would be wise to target the Clan Head’s youngest daughter. There was the Hōzuki man that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up taking a kunai to the throat for his trouble. The worst, Naruto privately thought, was the young child that wondered out into the midst of a ninjutsu battle and was caught in the crossfire.

Death upon death, blood splattering across his face again and again: Naruto could never forget them. In his head, it was first kill after first kill, beating an unstable rhythm of agony and fresh grief over and over again. It was almost enough to drive him mad.

Almost. Almost, because Uzumaki Naruto was not so easily torn down. He bent and bent and bent, but he would never, ever break. It was, in some ways, his greatest prank.

The first kill of this life, of these hands, though, came when Naruto is eight.

Later, he looked up the exact circumstances of the incident. In the aftermath of the Uchiha Massacre, a foreign power had decided to try their luck and sent an assassin to deal with Konoha’s sole jinchūriki in the most final way possible. It was pure chance that allowed the assassin to bypass village security, pure chance and the fact that Konoha’s ANBU had been stretched unbelievably thin.

It was almost too easy by then to twist – _just as Toyokazu-sensei taught_ , a distant part of his mind whispered, even as he thought, _who’s Toyakazu-sensei?_ – out of the path of the attacker’s chokutō and bring his tiny hand down in a chakra-laced strike. The blade dropped from the masked nin’s grip and Naruto caught it seamlessly.

He didn’t hesitate.

A fountain of warm blood surged out of the would-be-assassin’s chest. Naruto’s spindly fingers were white around the hilt of the chokutō, his eyes wide as his brain caught up with exactly what he just did.

A kill-strike. Economy of movement in its simplest form, brutally effective even when used by a scrawny eight year-old.

Naruto let go of the sword, scrambling backwards to avoid the body as it fell to the ground. He did that. He _did_ that. He _killed_ , without hesitation or reservation; he simply moved and now—

_In the shinobi world there are no second chances, Nanaka. You kill or you are killed._

—there was a drum pounding in his ears. Breaths rushed too slow into his lungs.

“Uzumaki-kun.” A hand settled on his shoulder, but he barely registered it. “Uzumaki-kun, we need to go.”

Naruto tore his eyes away from the body. He didn’t know how much time had passed since the kill, but it had been enough for ANBU to arrive on the scene. ( _Too late_ , he wanted to scream, _always too late._ ) He nodded once, sharply, at the bear-masked ANBU beside him, and found himself scooped up into strong arms.

The world bled together, a sudden blur of colour that Naruto somehow catalogued as being an effect of shunshin. As the world righted itself again, they were in a hospital room and there was a medic stripping him of his bloody clothes. They bundled him into an oversized chūnin uniform after pronouncing him uninjured and sat him on one of the cold, hard beds.

He wondered if they would give him his clothes back. He hoped not. You could never quite wash bloodstains out of white cloth.

( _How?_ his mind whispered sharply. _How do you know this?_ )

Just like the countless other times that Naruto had felt a life fade away beneath his hands for the first time, he never forgot this one.

.

“It’s worrying, Hokage-sama,” Yamanaka Inoichi stated, standing sharply to attention in spite of the exhaustion dragging at his features.

Sarutobi Hiruzen let out a weathered sigh. “Yes, I too am wondering how the intruder managed to bypass our security.” It hadn’t been easy plugging the gaps left by the massacre, and ANBU had been worked into the ground these past few weeks. Hiruzen rubbed at his temples, resigning himself to a long month of inquiries and Council meetings.

“That is worrying, yes,” Inoichi agreed, drawing Hiruzen back into the present, “but not what I’m talking about.”

Ah. “Then this is about Naruto,” Hiruzen surmised. “I thought your evaluation showed nothing out of the ordinary?”

“It didn’t. This is about the autopsy report that came through from Intel.”

Hiruzen quirked a single, wrinkled eyebrow in askance.

“The kill-strike was very well-placed,” Inoichi elaborated. “Worryingly so. Uzumaki-kun drove the assassin’s blade in between her second and third ribs with considerable force, straight into the base of her heart. She was dead in seconds – a very clean kill, all things considered. For an Academy student to have been able to pull it off is… concerning, to say the least. We don’t want another Itachi on our hands.”

“No,” Hiruzen agreed softly. “No, we don’t.”

Unbidden, his eyes strayed to the pile of paperwork on his desk, abandoned in the face of Konoha’s latest crisis. Somewhere in that pile were the drafts of a law barring early graduation from the Academy that he’d been planning to push onto the Council. As heartless as it seemed to think of it, the attempt on Naruto’s life could very well prove to be a good thing, or at least politically advantageous.

But that was work for another day. A day when there wasn’t a traumatised child curling in on himself in a hospital bed, when there weren’t flaws in the defences designed to keep Hiruzen’s people safe.

He sighed. “Is that all, Inoichi-san?”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

.

When Naruto was five, the Hokage sat him down in his office and asked if he would like to move out of the orphanage. It wasn’t a bad plan, even. There was a retired chūnin who would be living in the apartment above Naruto and she was willing to check on him and cook him meals. Naruto was relatively self-sufficient for a five year-old; he’d be fine.

Still, it was solitude on a level that Naruto had never been afforded before.

A part of him yearned for it.

The rest of him, the greater part, thought of the idea of being so completely and thoroughly alone and _blanched_.

There wasn’t much he could do to fight this, though. The Hokage had presented the idea to him as a completed plan, which meant that he’d thought it through. This had been in the works for far longer than this, and Naruto knew where it had come from.

The orphanage.

 _Disruptive_ , he remembered. That was what they called him. Because he screamed as he slept, haunted by nightmares he was only just beginning to remember.

Naruto swallowed.

Better the loneliness you choose than the one you have forced on you.

“Sounds great, jiji,” he cried with a grin.

He got a sad smile in return for his efforts.

.

Naruto didn’t remember the first time he dreamed of them. It seemed odd that he could remember so many of the other firsts from his dreams – first kiss, first loss, first blood – but not this one from reality.

Mostly, he dreamt of war.

Child soldiers and bloodshed, too young to die but dying anyway. He saw the same patterns again and again, children dying for their parents’ grudges, a never-ending cycle of death and survival and resentment and guilt. And, each time, each time he lifted a weapon in his dreams, all he wanted was for it to stop.

He wanted peace, desperately and wholly and truly.

And yet, he still picked up his kunai, or his katana, or naginata. And he ran into battle with a war-cry on his lips. And, inevitably, he died in battle, choking on his own blood and not quite at rest.

He wanted peace, but he couldn’t stop fighting. Above all else, beyond the scope of his pitiful ideals, he had to protect the people he loved.

So he threw out lethal jutsu without thought, numbed himself to the sound of someone’s last breath leaving their lungs, learnt to live and love the spike of adrenaline in his veins. Sometimes, he was older; sometimes younger. Sometimes, his hair was a deep, crimson red; sometimes it was a dark brown, almost black. He had been women and men and girls and boys and none-of-the-above, but always, always, he was painted against a backdrop heavy with carnage and harrowing loss.

He went to bed each night to face a world of war.

He awoke to a different kind of battle.

In his dreams, he was a killer, but he was never alone. He lost friends and lovers and siblings to his enemies, but at least he had them to start with.

At least he had some semblance of acceptance.

Harsh glares and cold shoulders marked his days, away from the slaughter of his nights. They were different to that war, though, because he could laugh them off. He could smile and grin and bear it.

They would not break him. _They will not break you, I promise._

.

As he lay in his hospital bed, blanket pulled up to his chin, Naruto tried to keep his eyes open. Tonight, he didn’t want to go to sleep. He didn’t want to face a battlefield in his dreams, not after what he did. Not after it leeched into his life. Not tonight.

But still, his eyes drooped shut. Sleep stole him away, and he dreamed.

He dreamt of her. Or himself as her, maybe.

She had vibrant red hair and inky fingers, an easy grin and a curious mind. Stretching out in front of her were yards and yards of paper, a black design half-complete on the surface. She held a spare brush between her teeth as she painted, and this was—

 _Fūinjutsu_ , a breath in his ear, _it’s in your blood, in your heart, in your soul_.

She paused partway through the seal.

There was a steady tugging inside her, chakra drain from the already partially active seal, as she got up from her workstation and dusted herself off. She shuffled her way through her house, awkwardly shaking the stiffness out of her limbs as she went. She came to a doorway and stopped, looking into the room.

A young boy slept soundly in a cramped bed. Her brother, Naruto knew, even as some distant part of him murmured, _your brother_. The brother had the same red hair as her, splayed out over his pillow.

A smile twitched at her lips. She leant down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Sleep well, Takeshi.”

Naruto woke up to a sterile hospital room and damp cheeks. _I want that_ , he thought.

 _You **had** that, _ he heard whispered back.

.

Naruto wasn’t sure what to think of Inoichi. The man was Ino’s father – he admitted as much during their first meeting – but something about him set Naruto on edge. Inoichi was mild-mannered and gentle, but even those types of men could turn out to be dangerous.

“How are you feeling today?” Inoichi asked.

Naruto shifted. “Fine,” he said. He didn’t like this part of their sessions together, when Inoichi tried to get Naruto to talk about what happened whilst trying to seem like he wasn’t trying to do that.

“Sleep well?”

Naruto shrugged. Nightmares weren’t really anything new, not for him, and at least these ones were _real_.

Inoichi sighed. He did that a lot, but Naruto suspected that it wasn’t from true exasperation. More mind games, probably. He didn’t get why Inoichi couldn’t just say what he _meant_.

“You haven’t been smiling much, recently,” Inoichi prompted. “Why’s that?”

Another shrug. “Bored.” Naruto fiddled with his fingers. “When can I go back to the Academy?”

“When I say you can.”

Naruto resisted the urge to scowl. “Will you let me go if I promise to smile more?”

Inoichi shrugged. “Depends,” he said. “Will they be real smiles?”

This time Naruto did scowl. Did it really matter if they were real, when nobody cared?

.

But then somebody did care, and it pulled Naruto’s feet out from underneath him.

“Is Ryouya-sensei in?” Naruto asked, practically vibrating on his feet at the door to his classroom.

The unfamiliar chūnin sat at Ryouya-sensei’s desk looked up from the papers he was grading to blink slowly at Naruto. “Uh, no,” the chūnin said after taking a moment to unfreeze at the sight of Naruto. “He’s off sick. I’m covering for him, though.”

Naruto grinned. “Great!” he chirped, bouncing into the room. “Inoichi-san who I have to call Inoichi-san or he gets mad and doesn’t let me go home on time said I could come back to school but I have to see my sensei for super- supper- supple—”

“Supplementary work?”

“Yeah, that!” Naruto cheered.

The chūnin looked slightly bewildered and more than a touch amused – a common combination when faced with him, Naruto had learnt – but he did put down his pen to give Naruto his full attention. “Why do you need supplementary work, uh…”

“Uzumaki Naruto!” Naruto grinned. “And I don’t think I _need_ it, but Inoichi-san says that I have to ask for it and Hokage-jiji says that I have to do what he says, so,” he shrugged, an exaggerated ‘what can you do?’ motion.

“Ah, well,” the chūnin shifted awkwardly. “If Hokage-sama says, I suppose.” He sighed. “It’s late. How about we talk about this over dinner?”

“Sure,” Naruto agreed, all too easily. “Your treat!”

“Naturally,” the chūnin said, sounding resigned. He reached out and hesitantly ruffled Naruto’s hair, earning a squawk of protest from the young boy. “I’m Umino Iruka, by the way.”

“I’m Uzumaki Naruto!”

“You already said that,” Iruka pointed out dryly, but Naruto could see his lips quirking upwards at the sides.

So he shrugged. “Thought you might need the reminder,” he said cheekily and then took off at a sprint.

When Iruka caught up to him five minutes later, calling him a brat but laughing as he did so, the smile Naruto flashed back didn’t feel so forced. _Iruka-sensei cares_ , he thought wonderingly. _He cares._

 _Of course he does_ , he heard back.

.

Ryouya-sensei came back two weeks later. He looked worn down as he dragged himself into the classroom, coughing his way through the roll call.

Naruto, who had been ready for _all the pranks_ , paused. It didn’t seem fair, he thought, to target Ryouya-sensei when the man so clearly needed a break. Naruto sighed, sinking in his chair. He would need to find something else to do to pass the time.

“Right,” Ryouya-sensei rasped. “The topic of this lesson is Senjū Tobirama, the Nidaime Hokage.”

 _Whatever_ , Naruto thought, turning back to his notebook and tuning his teacher out. He fiddled with his pencil before he turned it to the page.

A sharp, curved stroke. A straighter line, intersecting it. Another. Another. Another.

Naruto blinked when he looked down at the seal he had written out. It did nothing, had no effect, but it meant—

_Peace, meditation, safety, **resonance**._

—good things. It was warm.

Naruto smiled. He brushed his fingertips over it, severing the link from it to him with a tiny spark of chakra.

 _This is your legacy_ , he heard.

 _This is who I am_ , he thought back.

An ear-splintering bell shocked him out of his trance. He glanced up, noting that the lesson was over and his classmates were gathering up their books, ready to head home.

“Homework is a two page essay on the Nidaime Hokage and his greatest achievements,” Ryouya-sensei called out hoarsely.

Naruto looked down at his notebook, where he was supposed to record key details from the lecture, and noticed the absence of any such notes.

_Crap._

.

_Senjū Tobirama’s greatest achievement was, and shall remain to this day, persuading Takahasi Aika to marry him. It took him seven years of denial and a further three of unresolved sexual tension; the perseverance developed during this time was likely responsible for several of his other, less notable accomplishments, such as his promotion to Nidaime Hokage._

There was a large, red ‘F’ stamped at the top of Naruto’s paper.

.

“You’re a bit quieter than usual today, Naruto,” the Hokage said, watching Naruto closely. “Is something the matter?”

Naruto grimaced, kicking his legs up harder over the edge of his chair. “Ryouya-sensei failed me again.”

“Well, that isn’t so bad, is it?” the Hokage asked back. “It just means that you’ll have to try harder next time. Did he tell you where you went wrong?”

Naruto muttered something unintelligible.

“Speak up, Naruto.”

“He said that I shouldn’t make up lies about the Nidaime,” mumbled Naruto. “But it wasn’t anything bad! I just wrote about his wife!”

The Hokage froze. “His wife?” he echoed. “Naruto, do you have your assignment on you?”

Naruto shrugged, but he dug through his pockets before handing over a folded piece of paper. The Hokage unfurled it, brows creased in a deep frown, and his eyes visibly widened when he saw what Naruto had written. Naruto winced. He honestly thought it wasn’t too bad, but that was _two_ people now who hadn’t reacted well to it.

“Naruto,” the Hokage said, very slowly, in a tone that promised punishment of some form, “who told you that the Nidaime had a wife?”

“What do you mean?” The words escaped before Naruto could stop them. _I was his best man_ , he thought, but that wasn’t quite right. “I just… made it up.”

“Naruto, this is very important. I need to know who told you about the Nidaime’s wife.”

“Eh?” Naruto blinked. “He really had a wife? Ryouya-sensei said he didn’t and that’s why I failed.”

The Hokage looked like he was struggling very hard with the urge to… something. Eventually, he sighed and placed the school assignment on his desk. “No, Naruto,” he said. “The Nidaime never had a wife. Do you mind if I keep this?” He indicated the essay.

Naruto shrugged. “Sure.”

.

 _Like mother, like son_ , Hiruzen grimly reflected later. The last time he had to classify an Academy student’s assignment as an S-Rank secret, it was when Kushina had written an essay on her belief that there was a secret subset of ANBU, likely led by Shimura Danzō. At least he didn’t have to talk his friend out of assassinating an eight year-old, this time.

.

“Hard at work, I see,” Iruka commented as he slid into the empty seat next to Naruto. The chūnin gave Teuchi a jaunty wave before he turned back to Naruto. “Academy work again?”

Naruto nodded, nose still buried in his exercise book. “Ryouya-sensei keeps making us do these stupid exercises on the old dialogues.” He scribbled through another word and tapped his pen against the book.

Iruka raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean ‘old dialects’?”

“Yeah,” Naruto nodded again, not really looking up. “I don’t get it, though. Why does it matter how people talked a thousand years ago?”

“Well,” Iruka considered, “some of the scrolls from the Warring Clans Era are written in those dialects, so sometimes you need to be able to translate them to access the jutsu knowledge of that time.”

“But he doesn’t teach us cool words like that,” Naruto protested, whining. “He just tells us how to say dumb stuff like ‘Kishimaru is in the garden’. It sucks.”

Iruka sighed. He had that look on his face like he was struggling between disapproval and amusement. “Why don’t you let me take a look at your exercises and I can tell you where you’re going wrong?”

All too happy to be done with the stupid work, Naruto shoved his exercise book under Iruka’s nose and returned to his half-finished bowl of ramen.

Iruka looked down. Naruto’s handwriting had always been a little all over the place; his natural scrawl was the furthest thing from legible Iruka had ever encountered, but when Naruto had something to imitate it suddenly became near-perfect. Iruka, naturally, learnt this the hard way, when Naruto managed to successfully forge his signature after only seeing it once.

“Okay, I see where you’re going wrong,” Iruka decided. “You’re getting these two characters mixed up, which is a common mistake, and—” He broke off abruptly. “Naruto, who’s been teaching you fūinjutsu?”

“Fūinjutsu?” Naruto echoed, all too innocent.

Iruka was fundamentally unimpressed by Naruto’s attempt at deception. “Yes, the drawings in the margin of your exercise book – they’re seals. I don’t know enough to know what they should do, but experimenting with fūinjutsu is dangerous, Naruto, especially like this. What would you have done if they accidentally became active and you heart someone?”

Naruto shrugged. “They’re not going to accidentally activate,” he said, utterly unconcerned. “You have to draw them in chakra-conducting ink for that to be a danger.”

Iruka closed his eyes. “Naruto, sealing ink isn’t the only chakra-conducting substance in existence. A lot of modern materials also conduct chakra, if not as efficiently as sealing ink. Graphite is one of them.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Idiot! What do you think pencils are made out of?”

“Wait, I know this one!” Naruto cried. “It used to be lead but we changed it to… to…”

“Graphite, Naruto,” Iruka sighed. “No more fūinjutsu experiments, okay?”

“It’s not dangerous,” Naruto tried. He knew seals, or he _had known_ seals, once, or—well, he was good at fūinjutsu, not figuring out the mess of memories in his head. At least, he _thought_ they were memories. Anyway, the point is, he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t going to get himself, or anyone else for that matter, blown up.

“ _Naruto_.”

Naruto opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. How could he say this?

The Academy had always been awful. It was dismissive once-overs and striving for acknowledgement, a teacher who measured him up against everyone else and found him wanting. And then, Ryouya-sensei had gotten… tired, and now it was somehow worse.

Lessons that had once been boring were now lifeless. What limited attention Ryouya-sensei was willing to spare Naruto had evaporated overnight.

But with fūinjutsu, with seals, it was bearable.

Tucked away at the back of the classroom, out of sight and out of mind, that was where Naruto learnt to fall in love with fūinjutsu in its simplest form. A whisper of chakra tugging away at his core, warm against him like an embrace, ink and dust on his fingertips; there was a familiarity, a tenderness in the art that he had only ever found in his dreams.

And maybe he could never have _that_ dream, have Takeshi and his big sister and her seals, but he had this, and he had Iruka-sensei, and Hokage-jiji, and Ichiraku Ramen, and that was almost as good.

Almost.

“Fine,” Naruto agreed sharply. “No more experiments.”

They weren’t really experiments, anyway.

.

“Thank you, Madara,” he said, smiling gently. “I knew I could reason with you.” Chakra swirled through his body, the only thing keeping him upright, and he looked down, down at his friend. _Uchiha Madara_ , he knew.

_Some things are more important than one man’s life._

His hands did not tremble as he stripped away his armour. “Listen well, Tobirama,” he said, turning his head just barely towards his younger brother. He got a gaping, disbelieving look in return. “For these are the words for which I am about to exchange my life. After I die, I forbid you to kill Madara – the same goes to the Clan too. Any fighting between the Uchiha and Senjū will not be tolerated.”

He withdrew a kunai from the holster on his thigh and managed a small smile. “Tell Mito that I am sorry.” He closed his eyes and he brought the kunai down in a sweeping arc, straight into his stomach, an honourable if not quick death, but—

Something caught his hand.

His eyes flew open.

Madara, hand extended forward and gripped around the kunai, shook his head. “Some things… are worth more than one man’s life.” He smiled. “I hope you have something to call this village of yours.”

And Naruto, or Hashirama, maybe, laughed in open, easy relief.

When he woke up, Naruto felt like something had changed. And it had.

For the first time in nearly nine years, Naruto dreamt of peace.

.

“Good morning, class,” Iruka announced as he strode into the room. “I’m afraid that I have some bad news.”

Naruto was frozen into his seat, brain scrambling to make up for this unexpected development. _Where’s Ryouya-sensei?_ he wanted to scream, but he bit down on it, fingers curling into his palms. There was a building crescendo of noise around him as his classmates voiced their theories.

_On a mission. Visiting family. Being interrogated._

“Quiet!” Iruka called out and the classroom plunged into silence. “Yesterday, at approximately 2300 hours, Ryouya-sensei passed away. He had been ill for quite some time, but did not wish for you, his students, to become aware of his condition.”

_Dead._

Behind Naruto, one of the girls burst into tears. He could hear her friends drawing closer towards her, a solid comforting presence. The rest of the class fell into a similar pattern, groups of friends clustering together in little bubbles of consolation. No-one pulled in next to Naruto.

Iruka caught Naruto’s eye. The chūnin chanced Naruto with a soft look, but it had little effect. It had been two days since Naruto turned nine and two weeks since he dreamed of Madara and Hashirama, and maybe it was foolish of him, but he’d held out hope that somehow this year would be better than the last.

A cease-fire in his dreams only to face death in his reality. _Is this the price to be paid?_

Naruto wasn’t sure he liked it at all.

.

“Am I supposed to be sad?” Naruto finally asked, out for ramen with Iruka once more. “That Ryouya-sensei’s dead, I mean.”

Iruka gave Naruto a considering look. “Are you not?”

Naruto shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know,” he evaded. “I mean, Ryouya-sensei was kind of harsh, but he was a good teacher, sometimes. And he didn’t give me detention for my Nidaime Hokage essay, so he was sort of nice.” He shrugged again. “But he was really tired all the time and I think he was maybe just… waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“Waiting to die,” he elaborated. “He was suffering and now he gets to rest. There are worse ways to go, I guess.” He stared down at his hands. “And isn’t it kind of selfish to want him to still be alive when he was so tired of it? I don’t know.”

There was an uncomfortable silence as Naruto fiddled with his chopsticks.

Iruka eventually reached out and ruffled Naruto’s hair. “I suppose it is selfish,” he eventually decided, “but I think it’s good to be selfish sometimes.”

“Maybe,” Naruto allowed. He turned back to his ramen.

.

There was a seal on Naruto’s stomach that only showed when he channelled chakra. He had only noticed it recently, when he started practising ninjutsu before bed. _Uzumaki fūinjutsu_ , he thought as he traced his thumb over the central spiral that the clan from Whirlpool had been so famous for.

It was the focal point of the seal, the focal point of every Uzumaki seal, a stabilising centre to help the Uzumaki to control their large amounts of chakra during seal crafting. Other than that, though, Naruto had no idea what the rest of the strokes represented.

Higher-level fūinjutsu was where the art really started to get difficult to unravel, as the scripture got condensed down more and more and more. Figuring out complex seals was like trying to a jigsaw without any of the edge-pieces, and a good portion of the rest also missing.

Frowning, Naruto cut off his flow of chakra. It didn’t _seem_ to be fatal. Those sorts of seals were pretty easy to identify, because they just felt _wrong_. At a guess, it seemed to be derived from storage seals, but the resemblance was distant at best.

Naruto exhaled. Unless he could find an unabridged version of the seal – unlikely – it was going to be near impossible to piece together its purpose.

He went to bed with his mind whirling. He opened his eyes to a monster.

It was huge – that was the only thing that he could truly register about the best. It towered over him, its chakra barely held back by its wooden prison. If he were a lesser man, he supposed, he would be scared. As it was, he held only sorrow within him for everything that this creature represented.

“That is one big fox,” came a voice from his side.

He couldn’t help the smile that came to his face at the sound of that voice. “Mm,” he hummed in agreement. “In the good ol’ days, you and I would probably try to kill and cook it.”

“Ah, we did have the best honeymoon, did we not?”

He laughed. “What are you doing here, Mito?”

Mito stared the Kyūbi’s gently slumbering form up and down. “Something very ill-advised, most likely,” she said.

“Is this going to be one of the things that we never tell your father?”

“Probably.” Mito sounded very unconcerned in the face of death by father-in-law. Then again, she was raised by the man and the Uzumaki had always been a specific brand of brilliantly insane. “Nonetheless, it must be done. We cannot keep the Kyūbi in this position any longer. It is an unacceptable drain on your chakra, especially in the face of building war.”

War. The word left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. “And what do you propose we do?”

Mito smiled. “Take this weakness,” she said, “and turn it into a weapon.”

“Mito,” he started, but she cut him off easily with a shake of her head.

“I make my choices, Hashirama,” she replied. “Release it.”

The wood creaked and broke and the Kyūbi’s eyes began to crack open. He jumped back just in time for Mito to stretch her hand forward, golden chains bursting out of her back.

A roar tore apart the ground beneath his feet. He steadied himself with an instinctual application of chakra as Mito ran and jumped, landing atop one of the golden chains that was now tied to the unsteady ground. Blue streaks of energy danced at her fingertips, five from each hand, bright and vibrant against the beast’s russet-brown fur.

“Fūin!” Mito howled, slamming one hand down on the Kyūbi and the other on her stomach.

The last dregs of chakra usage faded away from within him as the Kyūbi – roaring and struggling and full of _hate_ – was sucked into the freshly crafted seal on Mito’s stomach. Dimly, he could hear himself say, “You are very terrifying, Mito-koi.”

“Ah, you love me for it, Hashirama.”

He did. Kami, he did.

.

 _Jinchūriki_ , he gasped. _Ink on a stomach and an Uzumaki spiral for stability—_

Naruto lurched from bed. He barely made it to the bathroom in time to lose the contents of his stomach in his toilet.

.

When the Hokage asked why he did it, forehead creased in grandfatherly disapproval, Naruto didn’t say, “Because I couldn’t find a monument with Mito’s face on it.” He wanted to, though, because it was _all her fault._

“Because I felt like it,” he said instead, refusing to meet anyone’s eye.

The chūnin guard – Kotetsu, at least that was what the other guard on duty had cried out to get his attention – went kind of… cross-eyed. “You vandalised the most high profile monument in Konoha, in broad daylight… on a whim?”

Naruto shrugged, determinedly petulant. “Yeah, so?”

Kotetsu choked.

The Hokage exhaled heavily, massaging his temples. “This is utterly unacceptable, Naruto,” he said sternly. Naruto shrugged once more, the picture of stubborn disinterest. “I’m not sure what Konoha’s leaders have done to earn such disrespect in your eyes, but this is not to happen again. I’ll be talking to Iruka about detention and you _will_ be clearing the graffiti off. Am I clear?”

Naruto stole a glower away for the Hokage Monument, still covered in its vibrant additions. It was visible through the window from the Hokage’s office and the four faces were staring right back at him, just as unaffected as ever. He vowed to kick Hashirama in the eye especially hard when he cleaned it off. This was the Shodai’s fault too, Naruto supposed, even if it was mostly his wife’s.

Why couldn’t they have just killed the fox? Why did they have to seal it?

_Why did it have to be me?_

The seal on Naruto’s stomach contained a demon. There was a bijū in his stomach and the disappearance of the Kyūbi on the day that he was born couldn’t just be coincidence. He was his village’s sacrificial lamb, but he did not choose this.

_I make my choices, Hashirama._

Fuck you.

He was not Uzumaki Mito, with her chakra chains and impossible fūinjutsu. _He did not choose this._

Konoha stretched out innocently below the monument. The sun glinted off the rooftops, the shadowed figures of active ninja easy to spot as they leap from roof to roof on their daily rounds.

_I did not choose this._

He hated it, hated with his entire being, but also… he accepted it. Naruto inhaled a shuddering breath. Then, he met the Hokage’s eye. “Understood, Hokage-sama,” he said.

Some things are more important than one man’s life.

The Hokage sighed. “Do try to stay out of trouble, Naruto,” he chided lightly. He was frowning, though, like Naruto was this puzzle to figure out, this broken trinket to put back together.

“Trouble finds me, jiji,” Naruto shot back with a grin.

The Hokage sighed again. “I can believe that.”

.

Four hours later and the Hokage Monument was finally back to its former glory. Naruto had a fading bruise on his foot from kicking Hashirama’s eye and a set of soaked clothes, courtesy of Kotetsu. He limped his way home, winding his way sullenly through Konoha’s streets and muttering about stupid chūnin and water jutsu.

His eyes caught on a familiar clan insignia: a fan. _The Uchiha._ Naruto faltered, something bubbling to life in his throat.

He remembered the Uchiha. Black-haired, black-eyed, a woman from ages ago, a man more recently, wondrously intelligent and deathly quick. He thought of a man with terrifying, luminescent, red eyes, and a mass of poisonous chakra. He thought of digging his own sword into his best friend’s back, of blood as it soaked through his clothes and—

_“You’ve changed, Hashirama.”_

—he walked away. Tears stung at the edges of his eyes, but he kept walking. He didn’t turn back.

_You haven’t, Madara._

Naruto stared at the fan and his mind threw him the image of another Uchiha, a boy. Sasuke.

Naruto thought of Sasuke with his unfocused eyes, and he thought of Madara with his biting humour. By comparison, Uchiha Sasuke, _the last Uchiha_ , looked like nothing more than an empty shell.

The fan stared back at Naruto.

He looked away.


	2. Depth Perception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sasuke, I know it may not seem to be the case now, but there is a very dear price to pay for making our father proud.”

**[2]  
Depth Perception **

There were some things you never forgot. With the sharingan, this was more than most.

He was four and staring up at his brother through kaleidoscope eyes.

He was six and killing for the first time. As he yanked his kunai out of his attacker’s neck, his father smiled. “You got that Senjū bastard good, son.”

He was twenty and fighting for his life to protect the girl he loved. His eyes flashed to life before he could stop them, just in time to immortalise the image of her throat ripped open, blood merging with her deep, crimson hair.

He was ten and weaving a genjutsu around a prisoner. She screamed and he did not care.

He was eight and crying.

His name was Uchiha Sasuke and perfect recollection was as much of a curse as it was a gift.

.

For most people, early graduation from the Academy was more trouble than it was worth. Ever since Itachi— _ever since the Massacre_ , Konoha had been more than a bit paranoid about the possibility of another young genius snapping. If the situation were anything other than what it was, Sasuke would probably have just shrugged it off and waited the extra two years.

But Sasuke wanted _out._

The Academy was an exercise in everything that he hated about his life. He hated the fangirls with their simpering smiles and shallow affection, and he hated the teachers and their pity disguised as sympathy. Mostly, though, Sasuke hated Uzumaki Naruto, who looked at him like he was supposed to be something more, something else, something he couldn’t be.

So Sasuke wanted out. And he was going to get it.

 _Set a goal_ , he reminded himself _, and then achieve it._

Sasuke’s regular psychologist was happy to sign off on his psychological well-being. He wasn’t surprised by that, seeing as his psych evals had been pretty solidly in the region of ‘unusually well-balanced’ ever since he was forced to start attending them.

The assessment from an active-duty chūnin showing that he had exceptional skill in an extra-curricular area was somewhat harder to come by, but the Uchiha name still held quite a bit of clout within the village and Sasuke’s elemental ninjutsu was above the level expected of most genin. Namely, that it _existed_.

All that was left after those two was to get the consent of his guardian. As a ward of the state, all he had to do was get the signature of his Hokage-assigned supervisor, which was, admittedly, slightly more difficult. She dug her heels in, but he wore her down in time.

It had been a major pain to organise, but it was more than worth it to finally get the hell out of Dodge – away from the teachers, away from the fangirls, and away from Uzumaki Naruto.

Yeah, right.

If only it were that simple.

Because for all of Sasuke’s plans, and all of his goals, the one thing he did not take into account was the fact that Naruto could have applied for early graduation too.

When he spotted the familiar head of blond hair outside the examination hall and heard that offensively cheerful laugh, Sasuke briefly considered deliberately flunking the exam. He quickly shot the idea down, though, because he was not going to suffer through another two years of tedium simply because of _Naruto_.

He settled for praying that Naruto would fail, even if he knew it was unlikely. Despite all the appearances Naruto put on to the contrary, the blond idiot wasn’t stupid.

Oh, he was definitely an idiot, but he wasn’t _stupid_.

It was painful in some ways, actually, because that blind, foolish optimism reminded Sasuke so very strongly of—

_IzunaHashiramaKitaNanakaASURA_

Sasuke winced, screwing up his brows in an attempt to suppress the sudden influx of memories surfacing in his brain. He hissed out his breath, turning away from Naruto and massaging his temples.

He had almost forgotten how bad that felt. Sasuke turned his eyes back to Naruto, suddenly a lot more interested in the peculiar blond.

 _That was… strange._ The flashes had died down a great deal, ever since Itachi— _the Massacre_ , and for such a strong one to occur just as he considered Naruto… Well, Sasuke had long since stopped believing in coincidence.

Filing Naruto away as a topic for later examination, Sasuke returned his attention to the crux of the matter. Namely, the exam.

He snapped back into focus just in time to hear the invigilator call them to attention and start to file them into the classroom.

It was time.

.

He was four and staring up at his brother through kaleidoscope eyes. _Mangekyō sharingan_ , he heard, a gentle caress against his mind, even in the face of the hot, heavy burn stabbing down through his eyes.

Above him, Itachi frowned. “Sasuke, when did you notice you were able to do this?”

Sasuke shrugged, allowing the red design to fade away to grey-black.

Itachi’s frown deepened. “You understand that you must hide this, Sasuke, don’t you?”

“O’ course,” Sasuke said. “Like the shaningen, yeah, I know.”

“Sharingan, Sasuke,” Itachi corrected with an amused smile. “And not quite like the sharingan in this case. Sasuke, you must _never_ show anyone this, not even if you are in danger.”

Sasuke frowned, a childish imitation of the expression that had graced his big brother’s face just moments ago. “Why?”

Itachi paused, silently considering. He dropped to a crouch in front of Sasuke. “You’re asking me this because of Father, aren’t you?”

Sasuke bobbed his head up and down.

“Sasuke, I know it may not seem to be the case now, but there is a very dear price to pay for making our father proud.”

Sasuke considered this. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “Our secret?”

Itachi smiled. “Our secret.”

.

The written portion of the exam was easy enough.

Sometimes, Sasuke thought about how his father would have reacted to the idea of him using the sharingan to memorise facts for his tests, but then he remembered that it didn’t matter. It was an effective tactic, and Father was _dead._

He finished with time to spare and heavy satisfaction in his gut at the knowledge that he had aced every single question.

After that, Sasuke, Naruto, and the rest of the graduating class were led out of the classroom to the Academy training grounds, where they were going to be assessed in taijutsu. It was warm outside, especially for a Fire Country Autumn, a touch too humid to be ideal fighting conditions. Still, if any of them allowed the weather to take them out, they weren’t worthy of being shinobi.

Sasuke frowned as the invigilator announced the match-ups. He relaxed when he heard Naruto’s match-up, though – paired with some Hyūga girl, which was just plain bad luck – relieved in the knowledge that the two opponents he was most worried about fighting had been taken out of the running. His frown resurfaced almost the second that he heard his own match-up.

Takana Wakaki. Not a clan kid, but the surnamed niggled somewhere at the back of Sasuke’s mind. Maybe a medic’s son?

“Ugh, Suzume-sensei, I have to fight the _baby_?”

Sasuke felt his eyes narrow. He was used to being underestimated, had capitalised on it in fact, but irritation flared to life in his gut nonetheless. The second that Suzume-sensei called, “Hajime!” Sasuke sprang into movement.

He crossed the distance between him and Wakaki in bare moments. Pushing off the ground, he launched his left leg into the air and brought it about in a sharply executed roundhouse kick. There was a loud crack as his leg made contact with Wakaki’s shoulder and Sasuke scowled internally. He had been aiming for the head. Damn short limbs.

Wakaki stumbled. Sasuke pressed his advantage, darting in with the famed Uchiha speed and sweeping his opponent’s legs out from underneath him. As Wakaki went down, arms windmilling as he tried to regain his balance, Sasuke brought his elbow _down_. Wakaki released a satisfying _oomph_ before he hit the ground with a heavy thud.

Not bad for a baby, huh?

Sasuke stood above Wakaki. “Forfeit.”

Wakaki spat out blood. “Fuck. You.” He moved to get up, but he was slow.

Sasuke gave him a dispassionate sneer ( _you are not worth my time_ ) before stepping forward and smashing his foot down onto Wakaki’s hand.

_CRUNCH._

Wakaki howled in pain.

Sasuke turned his back on Wakaki, then, coolly catching the eye of their bewildered invigilator. “Call the match,” he commanded flatly. _Or I break something else._

Suzume-sensei blinked once, twice, and then shook away her surprise. “Match to Uchiha Sasuke.”

It didn’t escape anyone’s notice – not Suzume-sensei, not Naruto, not the Hyūga girl – that Sasuke had just destroyed any chance that Takana Wakaki had of graduating this year. Broken fingers meant a zero on the ninjutsu section and the one-sided nature of Sasuke’s match meant a zero on the taijutsu section too.

Sasuke gave Suzume-sensei a defiant look.

.

 _Shows a worrying ruthless streak_ , Kakashi read as he went over the profiles of his prospective students. _High proficiency at taijutsu, a natural flare to his movements. Capable of a sealless kawarimi – impressive._

Well, at the very least, this should be interesting.

.

His hitai-ate was a comforting weight against his skin. Sasuke stared out over the other graduates without feeling, cataloguing their movements and noting down the few impressive ones as good potential teammates. He skated his gaze over Naruto quickly, not really registering him at all, determined not to have another memory flash forward in his mind.

Suzume-sensei entered the room in poof of smoke, a smooth shunshin that served only as an example of needless grandstanding. _Shinobi and their flashy jutsu_ , Sasuke wanted to sneer.

She smiled at them, recited a bland congratulatory speech, and then unfurled a list of team assignments.

 _Not Naruto, not Naruto, not Naruto,_ Sasuke chanted in his mind.

Teams One through Ten passed by without incident, the last of which contained the Hyūga girl Naruto had fought to a draw during his taijutsu evaluation. Dread pooled in Sasuke’s stomach.

His team had yet to be called. Neither had Naruto’s. There were five people left.

“Team Eleven,” Suzume-sensei read, “is Yagi Tatsuaki, Matsui Morio, and Furutani Kako. Your sensei is Shiranui Genma.”

Sasuke slumped. His eyes flicked over to Naruto and he tried to contain his dismay that he was stuck with Naruto for sure now.

“Hey, Suzume-sensei, what about me?” Naruto called, so insufferably jovial that Sasuke wanted to punch something.

“Ah, right,” Suzume-sensei gave Naruto a forced smile. “Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke, due to the odd number of graduates, you are being kept out of active team rotation for a while. For now, you have been assigned to Hatake Kakashi. He should meet you here in a bit to explain the situation more fully.”

Well, Sasuke supposed, _technically_ , he wasn’t on a team with Naruto. And Hatake should be a good sensei, or commander at the very least.

.

Or, you know, not.

Three hours. 180 minutes. 10800 seconds. Hatake was _late._

At least Naruto had stopped trying to strike up a conversation with him half an hour ago. Sasuke sighed heavily, glaring at the door like it was somehow responsible for their late commander.

Suddenly, the door cracked open. A head of gravity-defying silver hair poked into the room, followed by a masked face and a slouched body in Konoha’s jōnin uniform. Hatake Kakashi held up a hand in a loose attempt at a greeting. “Yo.”

“Did you get lost, or something?” Sasuke spat, voice more acidic than he had intended. He winced the second the words were out of his mouth. Insubordination on his first day as a genin. What a brilliant start.

Hatake turned his one visible eye on them, hovering over Naruto slightly longer than Sasuke. “My fist impression of you…” his gaze slid back to Sasuke, “you’re not worth my time.”

Again, _there_ , there was the twisting irritation inside Sasuke. He scowled at Hatake, pouring as much of his fabled Uchiha derision into it as possible.

Hatake didn’t so much as flinch. “Meet me on the roof in five!” With that, he disappeared in a twist of shunshin. Sasuke turned to Naruto, ready to make a comment about their dumbass commander, but Naruto was already halfway through a set of seals—wait a second, those were—

Naruto disappeared in a vortex of chakra and leaves.

Sasuke sighed. Was he the only one who didn’t know how to do that, or something? Come to think of it, that was pretty embarrassing, given who his cousin had been.

Well, no matter.

He closed his eyes, extending his feeble senses outwards. Naruto’s chakra was like a fire signal, loud and screaming from its position on the roof. Sasuke was no sensor – nothing even approaching that – but Naruto just had _so much chakra._ It wasn’t hard to find him, especially at this range.

Sasuke smirked, flared his chakra in a familiar pattern, and then opened his eyes.

Hatake’s appraising gaze greeted him. “I don’t think Naruto’s going to appreciate that,” he commented.

Sasuke shrugged. Using kawarimi to exchange yourself with living things – especially shinobi – was dangerous. If they knew what was happening (and inevitably, after the first time, they always did) then they could resist and he jutsu could backfire, resulting in an extremely painful blow to one’s chakra networks.

Luckily, Naruto was taken fully off guard. It wouldn’t happen again.

Naruto reappeared a second later, a second shunshin dissipating around him. “You bastard!” he screeched. “What the fuck was wrong with taking the stairs?”

Sasuke shrugged again. “Hn,” he said.

Before Naruto could lose his cool any further, Hatake interrupted. “Right, now that we’re all here, allow me to explain how this is going to work. Early graduations are quite rare these days, so the fact that the both of you passed had the potential to mess up the carefully balanced teams that the Hokage had designed. Instead of that, they decided to assign you two to me as my apprentices.”

Sasuke felt his eyes go impossibly wide. An apprenticeship? Those were probably even rarer than early graduates, and twice as prestigious.

“But,” Hatake cut in again, “I’m an active duty jōnin. I’ve decided that I only have time to take one of you as my apprentice. The other will be headed back to the Academy, where he can try again next year, or the year after that.”

It was Naruto who spoke up. “Which one of us will it be, then?”

Hatake smiled. Or at least, Sasuke thought he did. It was kind of hard to tell with the mask.

“I haven’t decided.”

Sasuke clenched his hands into fists.

Hatake shrugged. “Anyway, I think we should get introductions out of the way first. I’m Hatake Kakashi. I have likes and dislikes and I also have hobbies. Dreams for the future… Never thought of it. Blondie, you’re up.”

Sasuke saw Naruto twitch at the nickname. Huh. He wondered which one of them would be the first to try and kill their commander. Probably Naruto. Sasuke had more restraint.

“Right!” Naruto said exuberantly. “My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like ramen, fūinjutsu, and Iruka-sensei. I especially like it when Iruka-sensei pays for my ramen. I don’t like it when Iruka-sensei lectures me on the dangers of fūinjutsu, or when he tells the Hokage that I’m going to get myself blown up. Hobbies? Well, fūinjutsu, probably. Also, pranks. Dreams for the future…” He drifted off, considering. “Well, I guess peace might be nice.”

 _What an idiot,_ Sasuke sighed. _Fūinjutsu specialisms are rare enough that he could have turned that into an ace in the hole for whatever test Hatake cooks up._

 _But_ , he also heard, _it is impressive. Fūinjutsu is notoriously tricky._

Not to mention that Sasuke had absolutely no aptitude for the art whatsoever.

“And now, you.”

Sasuke snapped his attention back to Hatake. “My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I like tomatoes. I don’t like when people waste my time.” Eye-smile meet eyebrow twitch. “I don’t have hobbies. Dreams for the future…” He inhaled a stuttering breath. “That’s private.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Right, that was informative,” Hatake said. “Tomorrow, you two are to meet me at Training Ground 3 at 0700 hours for a survival test. The results of the test will decide which of you I take as my apprentice. If you don’t know how to get there, ask one of the chūnin at the Academy or around the village. Later, kids!”

Another swirl of shunshin, and Hatake disappeared from the roof.

Naruto turned to Sasuke. “Hey, how did you do that kawarimi earlier?”

Sasuke turned around and walked away.

.

“Ne, aniki, why don’t you want me to be a shinobi?”

Itachi looked across at Sasuke from where he was reading a book under a tree. “I’m not against you being a shinobi,” he answered simply. “I’m against you being one in place of being a child.”

Sasuke tilted his head to the side. “Because that’s what happened to you?”

Itachi smiled without humour. “More than you know.” He shut his book with a sharp snap. “Have you ever heard of a shinobi called Uchiha Obito?”

Sasuke frowned. “No.”

“I didn’t think you would have.” Itachi beckoned Sasuke over with his hand. “The Clan aren’t his biggest fans. He died in the war, completing a pivotal mission that led directly to Konoha’s victory.”

“Pivotal?”

“Important,” Itachi prodded his six year-old brother’s forehead, “vital,” another prod, “essential,” and one last prod.

Sasuke scowled. “Why does everyone hate him, then?”

“Hate is a bit of a strong word in this circumstance,” Itachi said. “As for the answer to your question, do you remember Father talking about Hatake Kakashi last week?”

Hatake Kakashi, Hatake Kakashi, Hatake Kakashi… oh. “The Bloodline Thief? What does he have to do with Obito?”

“Well, where did you think Hatake-san got his sharingan?”

From a corpse, of course, but that probably wasn’t the right thing to say here. “You mean he was given it by Obito?” Itachi nodded. “But why is everyone so mad, then? If it was a gift, they shouldn’t be angry. That’s just impolite.”

“Yes, it is,” Itachi agreed. “But we’re getting off the point.”

“Yeah, what does Obito have to do with me becoming a shinobi?”

Itachi exhaled deeply. “Well,” he said, tone considering, “you know I grew up during the war. It was very difficult to be a child during that time, especially one as… different as I was. There was a lot of pressure on me to perform well at training so that I could graduate from the Academy and bring honour to the Clan.”

“But you were _four_!” Sasuke exclaimed.

“I was,” Itachi nodded. “So, during the war, the only attention anyone ever paid to me was to train me, except for one person.”

The answer was obvious. “Obito.”

“Yes, Obito. He was often late to his team meetings because he stayed behind at the Compound to play with me and Shisui. I was distraught when it was reported that he’d died.”

“So you’re trying to be like Obito for me,” Sasuke tried out, not sure if he liked how the words sounded.

Itachi laughed. “Lord no,” he said. “I could never be like Obito. I don’t think I would ever want to. I’m just trying to be the big brother I wished I had.”

“And that’s why you and Shisui-nii are always dragging me away from training and stuff?” Sasuke guessed.

“Well, that and the fact that Shisui will take any and all opportunities to avoid work, but yes.”

Sasuke’s brows creased. “Is that why you don’t want me to tell anybody about my sharingan?”

Itachi’s eyes widened and Sasuke could see his older brother glancing around, scanning their surroundings. “In part,” he agreed quickly. “But let’s not talk about this. What do you say we play a game of tag?”

“But you always win!”

“Well, you wouldn’t want me to go easy on you, would you?”

“No! Wait—”

Itachi laughed again. “I’ll give you a ten second head start.”

“ _Aniki_ ,” Sasuke whined.

“Eight seconds remaining, otōto.”

Sasuke ran.

.

Naturally, Hatake was four hours late to their agreed meeting place. Naruto was asleep, softly snoring, when their commander arrived, and Sasuke took great pleasure in being the one to kick the blond idiot awake.

“Tired, Naruto?” Hatake asked lightly.

“Fuck you,” was Naruto’s eloquent response.

“Maa, maa, such vulgarity from a potential genin,” Hatake said, shaking his head. “What is Konoha coming to these days?”

“Seeing as you’re supposedly one of our most decorated jōnin, nothing good,” Naruto muttered, and Sasuke particularly enjoyed the way that Kakashi looked to be struggling with the urge to strangle the blond. Naruto’s obnoxiousness was only amusing when directed at someone else.

“So I see you did your research,” Hatake commented.

Sasuke couldn’t help it. He snorted.

“Something funny, Sasuke?”

Just the idea that the Uchiha hadn’t stockpiled information on the ‘Bloodline Thief’. “Nothing, Hatake-san,” he answered neutrally.

“Okay then,” Hatake shrugged it off. “The purpose of this exercise is to get this,” he held up a bell on a string of red thread, “away from me. Whoever has this bell at noon passes the test.”

“Right!” Naruto sprang to his feet, looking ready to charge Hatake.

“Mou, I wasn’t done yet, Naruto,” Hatake chided. “You two, turn out your pockets.”

They did as instructed. Sasuke’s contained the standard Uchiha field arsenal: kunai, shuriken, ninja wire, and a couple of exploding tags. Naruto’s pockets were a little different, full of the usual kunai and shuriken but also one heck of a lot of storage scrolls.

 _Huh_ , Sasuke thought. _Seems he wasn’t lying about the fūinjutsu._

“After reading your Academy reports,” Hatake explained, sorting through the materials on the ground, “and seeing what an _impressive_ showing you two gave at the graduation exams, I’ve decided to restrict your equipment. In real life, you may be forced to go on without your packs, losing vital resources in the process. Think of this as training for that.”

_Or you just don’t want to have to deal with whatever a budding fūinjutsu specialist can cook up, you lazy bastard._

Hatake handed each of them five kunai and six shuriken, before gathering the rest up and storing them on his person. “Right, on my mark, you may begin.”

Naruto and Sasuke tensed.

“Hajime!”

.

Say what you want to say about him, but Sasuke knew one thing: when it came to taijutsu, he was good. He’d barely broken a sweat during his graduation exam, and he was capable of far more impressive feats than that.

That said, Hatake was better.

Close quarters combat with the man was terrifyingly one-sided and that was _while_ the asshole was reading a book. The only way Sasuke could think of to possibly gain the upper hand was to unveil his sharingan, but he was reluctant to do so before he was officially a genin. In desperate need of an advantage, Sasuke made a split-second decision to take a leaf out of Naruto’s book.

Sasuke switched tactics as soon as he was within range of Hatake. Instead of going in for a smooth punch, he swept his head forward, smacking the hard metal of his hitai-ate into Hatake’s chin. It served its purpose, momentarily knocking him off his guard. Head thundering in pain, Sasuke registered that this was the opening he had been waiting for.

He darted in and made a grab for the bell. As soon as his fingers closed around something solid, he pushed backwards, chakra filtering into a sealless kawarimi. In the time between one breath and the next, Sasuke was out of Hatake’s reach, triumphantly holding a… pencil.

A pencil. Seriously? What the hell?

Sasuke exhaled irritably. Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

Pocketing the pencil, he turned back to return to the fight, only to see Naruto standing in the clearing, seemingly clueless as a barrage of kunai head for him.

Pain burst into Sasuke’s skull. _IzunaKitaNanakaHitomiTakerō—_

—“ASURA!” he screamed.

Naruto startled, but Sasuke was already moving.

Chakra flooded through his limbs. He was across the clearing in an instant, fire dancing around his lips with barely a second thought. A heartbeat, and his foot touched down in front of Naruto. Another, and he forced the fire out, through his lips, unbearably hot at this close range. Another, and he pivoted, arms catching around Naruto and yanking before he forced the last shreds of his chakra into an overpowered kawarimi to get them the hell out of there.

Sasuke panted as they touched down, as far away as he dared take them. He was out of chakra.

 _Damn it_ , he cursed. _Damn it all._

He had just blown his one chance at passing this fucking test. His one chance of getting out of that shithole, of getting closer to Itachi.

“Hey,” came a hesitant voice. “Sasuke, you okay?”

It was then that Sasuke realised that tears had started to leak out of his eyes. His fucking eyes. His traitorous, fucking eyes.

“Shut up,” he spat back, rubbing furiously at his face.

“It’s just, you, uh, you didn’t have to do that back there. I was fine, you know?”

“I know,” Sasuke gritted out.

They sat there in silence, until Naruto shifted. Quietly, so soft it was barely a whisper, he said, “Indra?”

Sasuke froze.

.

Sasuke screamed and screamed and screamed. Strong arms wrapped around him, Itachi, always there, always _safe_ —

 _IndraIndraIndraIndraIndraYOU_ —

“Sasuke,” Itachi uttered, “you need to be quiet.”

And just like that, he stopped.

 _Sasuke_ , he remembered. He was Sasuke. Uchiha Sasuke.

But still, as he sobbed silently into his older brother’s chest, a part of him rasped _, No._

 _Indra_ , he heard again and again.

He was seven years old and all he wanted was for it to _stop_.

.

Sasuke shifted in his position in the shade of a tree. This was it, the start of his and Naruto’s final stand against their commander. His one chance to pass the test.

Five metres away, Naruto was stood in a small clearing, shirtless. Sasuke could see the subtle tension in his temporary teammate’s shoulders as Naruto’s eyes skated over three trees around him again and again. It was an obvious tell, but at least he hadn’t given away Sasuke’s position with his worrying.

Five minutes dragged by. Noon drew closer. Sasuke knew that they didn’t have long before Hatake chose to engage them in combat; everything he had done so far had been designed to humiliate them – _teach them_ – so why should this prove to be any different?

Hatake did not disappoint. He dropped silently into the clearing, lone visible eye taking in Naruto’s bare-chested appearance with thinly veiled bemusement.

“Maa, Naruto,” Hatake said, shoulders slouched and book still in hand, “I’m afraid I’m not interested in you like that.”

Naruto smiled. “I needed something to write on.”

It was the signal.

Naruto threw out a hand, thudding three kunai into the trees he had chosen. They made contact, forming an equilateral triangle with Hatake and Naruto at the centre. As the air tinged with the taste of Naruto’s chakra, Sasuke started to run through handseals. He didn’t have the chakra to be able to screw this technique up even once; he wasn’t going to risk using it with anything less than the full string of seals.

“Fūin!” came Naruto’s cry – the second signal.

Sasuke let go of the chakra he’d built up and substituted himself with the bell on Hatake’s belt.

A second passed. And another. No-one moved.

Naruto was frozen, smirk still in place on his face, body rooted to the spot in a throwing stance, and Hatake was in a similar predicament, only his expression was one of shock. Sasuke cringed internally at how close he was to the older man and at how much the next part of their plan was going to hurt.

Seal Translation – or so Naruto had told him – was a mostly lost art. It was built on the idea of creating a seal in one location and then using a conduit – in this case, kunai – to transfer it to another place. It was mostly lost, however, because it was mostly useless. The power of the seal was decreased exponentially through the translation, it was ridiculously chakra-intensive, and the person who activated the seal had to be directly within its area of effect.

It simply wasn’t combat-practical.

But, it wasn’t well known. And given that Hatake had been apprenticed under _Namikaze Minato_ , it was probably their only chance at taking the jōnin off-guard with fūinjutsu.

Sacrificed to this convoluted trap was Naruto’s shirt – which was now one hundred metres west, with a seal sketched on top of it in pencil – and one of Sasuke’s kunai – which was now embedded in one of the three transference foci of the seal.

The result was this: a three point, large area, paralysis and chakra-leeching seal transferred from its original position to this clearing, with two genin-to-be and one mildly surprised jōnin captured inside it. It was impossible to use jutsu to escape it and it was impossible to walk out of it. An effective, highly experimental, and potentially lethal trap.

Three. Two. One. Naruto cut off his chakra feed to the seal, deactivating it and releasing all three of them from its grip. As he turned to run for the bell, Sasuke slammed into Hatake with all the momentum he could muster from his position well within the man’s guard. That was to say, not much.

Sasuke wasn’t going to be able to keep Hatake occupied for long, but he didn’t need to. Naruto dived for the tree Sasuke had been hiding in—

Naruto reappeared, bell in hand, a grin stretched across his face.

 _Gotcha_ , Sasuke thought.

.

Hatake was looking at them with something vaguely resembling respect. Actually, it was closer to scrutiny, as if he were taking apart the best ways to kill them if he ever needed to, but, you know. Details.

“So I see Naruto has a bell,” Hatake eventually spoke up, gesturing at the still-shirtless Naruto. “I guess that means you fail, Sasuke.”

Naruto quirked an eyebrow at Hatake, before rolling his eyes and throwing the bell to Sasuke. “I’m going to go find my shirt. Call me when you’re done explaining,” he said, waving a brief goodbye to them.

Sasuke looked to Hatake. The jōnin gave nothing away.

Sasuke exhaled. “This was a test of teamwork,” he said. “A genin can’t take on a jōnin, no matter how advanced they are. It would have been unreasonable to ask that of us even before you took away Naruto’s fūinjutsu supplies and my ninja wire. You set us an impossible task to see how we’d react under pressure – would we splinter apart, or bind together.”

He shrugged. “Then there’s the fact that you let me steal a pencil,” he added, “which was as much of an invitation to team up with a fūinjutsu specialist as I’ve ever heard.”

Naruto returned then, carrying his shirt in his arms, scowling at the mangled hole where the seal had been written. He held it up with a grimace. “Overestimated the durability,” he explained. “So, we good?”

Hatake blinked at the pair of them. What a picture they must have made, Sasuke realised. Two ten year-olds, battered but far from broken, one of them shirtless, trying to outwit a join. With a small smile, Hatake lifted his hand up—

—and Sasuke tensed, ready to spring back into action—

—before rubbing the back of his neck. “Yare, yare, I’m losing my touch,” Hatake lamented. “Outsmarted by two upstart genin.” He settled on the ground, gesturing for them to do the same, and nodded reassuringly. “Explain your plan to me.”

Sasuke hesitated. His eyes flickered to Naruto, who nodded and grinned.

“Right,” Sasuke said, sinking to the ground. “This is what we did.”

.

He was eight and crying.

“Itachi, why?” Sasuke choked out. His eyes were fixed on his brother’s face, unable to force himself to look a bare centimetre away. To the left, to his mother. To the right, to his father. He—couldn’t.

There were tears falling from Itachi’s eyes. Salt water and blood. “I’m so sorry, Sasuke.”

_That doesn’t make this right. That doesn’t make this **okay**._

“There was no other choice.”

_There is always another choice._

“Uchiha Madara is still alive.”

Sasuke swallowed dryly. “No,” he rasped. “No, no, no, this isn’t _real_. This is a genjutsu. Stop it, Itachi. Stop it, stop it, _stop it_.”

“I’m so sorry, Sasuke.”

_You have no right to say that._

“I couldn’t fulfil my promise of a normal childhood for you after all.”

He didn’t believe it, refused to believe it—

— _deathdeathdeathchildrendyingbloodcorpseshatredhateburningangerhatehatehateTRAITOR—_

Sasuke’s eyes bled into a deep, unsettling red. It burned in his eyes, mangekyō sharingan, and he regretted it, because now he _could never forget this_.

“You need to become strong no, Sasuke. Strong enough to survive. Strong enough to defeat me. And when you’re strong enough to do that, to kill me, come and find me, and take my eyes.”

_“Take my eyes, Madara,” whispered Izuna. “You have greater need of them than I.”_

“Caring is not weakness, otōto. I love you.”

Sasuke was lost to his emotions. It was instinct, nothing more, to say, “I love you too,” back. He didn’t mean it.

_Caring is not weakness._

“I’m so sorry, otōto.”

 _LIAR_ , Sasuke wanted to scream. Instead, the world around him shattered, and he collapsed, unconscious.

.

He and Naruto were registered as a partial squad under Kakashi’s command. Naruto grinned at them, a force that could fell nations, and Sasuke found himself tentatively grinning back.

 _Caring is not weakness_ , he heard in Itachi’s voice.

 _Indra?_ he heard in Naruto’s, and it… echoed.

That night, he dreamt of another life for the first time since the Massacre. He dreamt of a war unlike any he had ever seen – the first war, the only war – and insufferable loneliness. He dreamt of a man, alone and headstrong, such an idiot, and he dreamt of the man’s bother, who preached love but could not even love his only sibling.

He was haunted and he was taunted and he woke the next day to sweaty sheets and an aching body. He hauled himself up and through his morning routine, then down to the bridge where he was supposed to meet Naruto and Kakashi.

And Naruto smiled at him, a force that could fell nations.

Maybe one day it would.

Sasuke smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, Naruto's excceptional skill for early graduation wasn't fuuinjutsu, but in fact was stealth. He got asked Kotetsu to sign it. Kotetsu did, but only after he had laughed his arse off for five minutes straight.


End file.
